sshhh pat - does it actually work?..and any experiences on habitual waking.

[FifiFerusha]

hi all,

So, my DS is only 11 weeks and I have been very nice to him previous by rocking him in arms or pram to get to sleep for naps/bedtime etc...however, I really want to teach him how to self sooth, to help him more than anything else. He only naps in the day for short times, ( four30/ 40 minute naps) and he always seems to need more sleep. He is pretty good at night and will sleep from 7 (dream feed at 11) until a habitual wake up at 3 am every night, from which point I struggle to get him back to sleep without feeding him to sleep or worse scenario putting him in bed with me. He then wakes at 6.30 for the day which I am fine with as I am an early riser and it fits in with the daily routine..getting my daughter up at 7 etc...

I have started shh pat and am on day 2. I thought it seemed a ludicrous idea at first but it actually seems to help a lot and although it is taking between 10 and 20 minutes it helps him go down for naps in the day. However I cant help thinking that I am not teaching him to self sooth but just giving him an alternative prop to sooth him. Is there a point where you don't need to shhh pat or something. I don't understand how it helps them SELF sooth. Any experiences on how it helps in the long run...and of dealing with habitual wakings much appreciated.

Eventually you retreat further and further so from ssshing and patting to just ssshing to just using ssh ssh as a sleep time cue and then just putting them down awake. We rocked until 4 months then started ssh pat and never looked back. Even if it takes a little while to retreat then it was still better than rocking a 16lb baby for us.

try the prince lionheart bear too it is motion activated and you can have womb sounds going off randomly tends to work plus because its a bit noisy it teaches them to sleep through anything i now have a son who wakes for no one!

Self soothing at 11 weeks is a bit ambitious tbh, baby is only tiny.

You're not creating bad habits, you're responding to their needs. Why not be nice to a newborn?

I've fed and cuddled children to sleep a lot longer and they all learned to go to sleep for naps and night time without special training.

Lots of shorter naps at this age and frequent night wakings sounds pretty normal. :)

Try not to worry too much that you're spoiling them or creating a problem.

A bedtime story/short routine even before feeding to sleep once they're a bit older can help. Eventually you can then swap so that it's feed then story.